The Redemption of David CorsonGoss, Charles Frederic
General
The Redemption of David Corson
Goss, Charles Frederic
Society of Friends -- Fiction
"Let me help thee. There are only a few more furrows. I am sure that I
can sow," she said, extending her hand.
He placed some of the seed in her apron and she trudged by his side,
laughing at her awkwardness but laboring with all her might. Her lover
took her hand in his and showed her how to cast the seed, and so they
labored together until every open furrow was filled. It was dark when
they were done. They lingered a little while to put the cabin in order,
and then turned their faces towards the old farmhouse.
The two little brooks were singing their evening song as they mingled
their waters together in front of that wilderness home. The lovers stood
a moment at their point of junction, as Pepeeta said, "It is a symbol of
our lives." They listened to the low murmur, watched the crystal stream
as it sparkled in the moonlight, stole away into the distance, chanting
its own melodious lay of love. It led them out of the clearing and into
the depths of the forest. They moved like spirits passing through a land
of dreams. The palpable world seemed stripped of its reality. The
creatures that stole across their path or started up as they passed, the
crickets that chirped their little idyls at the roots of the great
trees, the fire-flies that kindled their evanescent fires among the
bushes, the night owls that hooted solemnly in the tree tops, the rustle
of the leaves in the evening breeze, the gurgle of the waters over the
stones in the bed of the brook, their own muffled footfalls, the patches
of moonlight that lay like silver mats on the brown carpet of the woods,
the flickering shadows, the ghostly trunks of the trees, the slowly
swaying, plume-like branches, sounded only like faint echoes or gleamed
only like soft reflections of a fairy world!
"It was here," Pepeeta said, pausing at the roots of a great beech tree,
"that I came the day after we had first seen each other, to inquire of
the gypsy goddess the secrets of the future. I have learned many lessons
since!"
"It was here," said David, as they emerged from the forest into the
larger valley, "that thee stood, a little way from the doctor's side,
stroking the necks of his horses and peeping at us stealthily from under
thy long dark lashes on the day when he tried to persuade me to join him
in his roving life."
"It was here," Pepeeta said, as they approached the little bridge, "that
we met each other and yielded our hearts to love."
"And met again after our tragedy and our suffering, to find that love is
eternal," David added.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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